Dunnhumby design embraces new thought on workplace

Sep. 3, 2013

Laura Day and Brian Graham in Colliers International's collaborative area. Ricky Dennis and Dave Hornberger are in the background. / The Enquirer

By the numbers

According to Gensler’s 2013 workplace survey:

• Employees who have choices about where and when to work are 12 percent more satisfied. • 77 percent of employees prefer quiet when they need to focus. • 69 percent of employees are dissatisfied with noise levels at their primary work space. • Employees spend 20 percent less time collaborating than they did five years ago.

According to CoreNet Global, a commercial real estate association: • The average amount of office space per worker dropped from 225 to 176 square feet from 2010 to 2012. • 81 percent of global corporations surveyed in June say they have open offices.

What makes an open office?

Open offices can look very different from company to company but generally have features like these: • Huddle room: This small office can be used by anyone for a private conversation. It usually has a desk and sometimes a comfortable couch or chair. Paycor plans to have 30 huddle or project rooms, where computer images can be projected onto a wall for small group discussions. • High ceilings: High ceilings give a sense of space in layouts that tend to pack employees more tightly together. Greater height also prevents sound from bouncing around as much, according to Bill Poffenberger, a commercial real estate executive. Paycor’s office floors will have 10-foot ceilings; dunnhumby’s, 14-foot. • Hoteling work stations: These unassigned stations are primarily for employees who work out of the office. They provide spots for workers to plug into the company network when they’re on site. • Lounges: These small areas are for informal conversation. Colliers employees, for example, can check out the stock market on a flat-screen TV in a lounge with high-top tables and couches. • Large common spaces: Fitness rooms, cafeterias and even recreational areas allow workers to relax and build relationships with each other. Total Quality Logistics has a basketball court and a small, self-serve store that carries everything from snacks to Bounce dryer sheets. Dotloop has a pool table and putt-putt golf. • Inviting staircases: Wide, open stairways encourage walking instead of taking an enclosed elevator that reduces interaction. Dotloop’s 120 Cincinnati employees are spread over two floors but connected by a spiral staircase.

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A new office building Downtown is about to move Cincinnati from the back of the pack to the forefront of U.S. workplace design.

The newly unveiled design for dunnhumby centre is an open office, with cutouts in the floors that will allow natural light from skylights to pierce the four stories of office space.

When it’s finished in early 2015, the building at Fifth and Race also will include a mix of individual and collaborative work spaces, 14-foot ceilings and wide staircases to allow easy movement between floors. The U.S. headquarters of dunnhumby, the fast-growing consumer research company, will be remarkable, too, for what it doesn’t have: executive offices.

“Dunnhumby is an amazing example of what the workplace of the future looks like,” said Todd Heiser, design director for Gensler, the global architecture firm that’s designing both the building’s interior and exterior.

The 294,000-square-foot dunnhumby centre, coming on the heels of the new Paycor headquarters in Norwood and a number of smaller open-concept offices, will cement the arrival of the new workplace in Cincinnati. Open offices aim to improve productivity by allowing for both more collaboration and more customized individual work options.

The old office layout – a ring of executive window offices and smaller interior offices or cubicles – has been on the way out for years nationally. Total Quality Logistics was among the local pioneers of the open concept with its 100,000-square-foot headquarters, built six years ago near Eastgate Mall. Some smaller companies, particularly tech startups and marketing companies, also have been opening up.

Paycor, a fast-growing human resources software company, is building its 135,000-square-foot headquarters in Norwood with the aim of putting “the employee at the center,” according to Stacey Browning, chief product officer. When it opens next spring, workers will be able to use standing-height desks, treadmill desks and even outdoor spots.

Changing the workplace is becoming a business imperative for some companies. Gensler, dunnhumby’s architect, released a report in July that showed workplace performance has dropped 6 percent the past five years.

Workplaces aren’t doing enough to provide employees with options for individual, “focused” work time or opportunities to collaborate, the report said: “The ability to focus is a primary driver of effectiveness, but in today’s competitive workplace and economy it’s not enough. Collaboration remains key to the spread and development of ideas in pursuit of innovation.”

Individuals’ work spaces differ in the new, open workplace, depending on companies’ needs and culture. Paycor will still have desks with low walls that the company prefers not to call cubicles, Browning said. But Paycor also will be able to make the walls taller or remove them completely, providing flexibility as trends change.

Colliers International removed cubicles altogether when it renovated its 10,000-square-foot downtown Cincinnati location three months ago. The commercial real estate broker found that opening up an office can be a jolt for employees used to working another way.

“At first we just sort of stared at each other,” said Brian Graham, Colliers’ Ohio director of research. “You think maybe there’s going to be privacy issues ... but then you get used to it. It has opened up a lot more communication within our team.”

Dotloop, a tech startup, chose connected desks with small dividers when it moved into Longworth Hall, near Downtown, about 18 months ago.

Total Quality Logistics has dividers down the middle of banks of desks but no side separation.

“Energy on the floor is really high when you have this dynamic,” said Jo Wehage, marketing director at TQL, which matches trucking companies with customers. Employees often hear of a co-worker dealing with an accident or other glitch and jump in to help, she said.

At the coziest extreme, dunnhumby employees will be assigned to tables with optional dividers. The table was a fitting choice, Heiser said, because of its history as a workhorse, from the farmhouse table to the conference table.

Dunnhumby’s office, like most open offices, will include a range of alternative work spaces. A small office might be ideal for a conference call, or an informal furniture group might be the best spot for a brainstorm session.

“We have to think about a work space as a collection of tools,” Heiser said. “We’re transitioning from this environment of ‘me’ space to ‘we’ space.”

The benefits of an open office can extend beyond greater productivity: Companies are often able to put more employees in smaller spaces. Businesses used to need 250 square feet of office space per employee, said Bill Poffenberger, a commercial real estate executive and head of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Cincinnati office.

“That was the rule book,” he said. “Now some studies show the new norm will be 150 square feet per employee. That affects the bottom line, which is point A on most decisions.”

Total Quality Logistics has just 125 square feet per employee.

An open office design is also a recruiting tool for Paycor. Despite the smaller footprint of individual work spaces, employees – particularly younger ones – are attracted to open offices’ amenities and flexibility.

Cincinnati’s large corporations have generally lagged in opening up their offices, but Poffenberger said they’re more likely to update their layouts when they have a change to their workforce such as a new division moving in or out.

“When you are going through an office change of some sort, it gives you an opportunity to change the floor plan and design in a more dramatic way,” he said.

As those opportunities arise, Poffenberger said, companies will move toward a more open workplace.

“It’s coming,” he said. “You’re seeing that nationally.”

And even here in Cincinnati. ⬛

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